Thursday, January 25, 2018

I mean, for God's sake, if we can't even get people to agree on something that has been common knowledge for centuries. . . No wonder 30-some-odd percent of us think that a senile malignant narcissist with a pathological lying problem is doing just a fine fucking job as president!

For the attendees of the Flat Earth International Conference, such as
Mark Sargent, "Everybody here can agree on absolutely one thing, which
is [Earth] is not a globe," he said.

Sargent, who has a large following on YouTube
thanks to his series, "Flat Earth Clues," said he denies that he is the
"father" of the movement and rather thinks of himself more like a
"recruiter."

The father of the movement? Ha ha, no, I can't take credit for that. Truth be told, there have always been dullards who believe ridiculous shit. I just find the dullards and lead them to the shit!

"Flat Earth is not something new. I did not invent flat Earth," Sargent said

Yeah! We know! Of course the idea of a flat earth isn't new. It existed before the invention of science! Then, after the ancient Greeks invented science, it stopped existing BECAUSE IT WAS WRONG!

And if there were any doubts that the idea of a non-globular Earth was wrong, they were put to rest by Ferdinand God Damn Magellan in the 16th fucking Century!

"Flat Earth is not something new. I did not invent flat Earth," Sargent
said. "All I did was walk up to a door, point at it [and] say, 'You know
what I think it's some really interesting things on the other side of
this."

Yeah, but then there wasn't. There wasn't anything interesting. Just a dumb stupid idea that any elementary school child could tell you is wrong.

The flat Earth movement has grown online, with YouTube channels like
Sargent's and others including "Globebusters" as well as "ODD TV," a
flat Earth rapper with over 100,000 subscribers.

One Hundred THOUSAND subscribers?!?!?!
How?
How can there possibly be. . . maybe people are watching to laugh at him?
Please?

Last November, Sargent and other flat Earth believers gathered at an
Embassy Suites hotel in Raleigh, North Carolina, for the Flat Earth
International Conference, an educational seminar

NO!!! That is NOT what "Educational" means!
That is the opposite of what "educational" means!

Last November, Sargent and other flat Earth believers gathered at an
Embassy Suites hotel in Raleigh, North Carolina, for the Flat Earth
International Conference, an educational seminar where individuals and
organizations discuss scientific questions about Earth.

Scientific questions? Scientific questions?
Whether the Earth is round or flat has not been a scientific question since about 200BC.
It's not science anymore. It doesn't take science to figure out that the Earth is round when you can get on a plane in New York, fly East, land in London, refuel, continue east, land in Tokyo, refuel, continue to fly East, land in San Francisco, refuel, continue to fly East and end up back at JFK. You don't need any scientific training or accumen to figure that out.

Sargent said he thinks there are more people who believe the theory than just those outspoken on the subject.

"You
know flat-Earthers," he told ABC News' Eva Pilgrim. "I guarantee it.
But you don't know who they are because they are afraid of talking about
it."

GOOD! They should be! They should be absolutely ashamed of being that cinder-block stupid. And ignorant. And just nutty, I mean do they think that every normal person in the world is in on some giant hoax to pretend that the world is round? Do they think it's some kind of conspiracy?

Conference attendees Amy Nicholson and Kim Gurley both told ABC News they are more reserved in their beliefs.

Gurley,
who traveled from Houston, Texas, to attend the conference, said, "I
haven't really come out all the way yet." Nicholson said she wrote a
book of poetry about her flat Earth journey, but even her best friend
told her she "sounds psychotic."

Flat. Earth. Journey.
Flat. Earth. . . JOURNEY?!?!?!
What the fuck does that even mean?

Also, how do you come out part-way on this? Are you telling people that you think the Earth is a cube?

Other conference attendees told ABC News they believe there is tangible proof behind the idea.

But there isn't!
Did no one from ABC News point this out?
Or ask them what that "proof" is? Because I would actually like to hear what they think is "proof" of the very round Earth is flat.

Some flat-Earthers imagine Earth looks like a snow globe with a dome
-- round but not a sphere. According to most flat Earth maps, the North
Pole is at the center with the ice of Antarctica holding everything in.

Sargent
told ABC News he is "pretty sure" that’s what the flat Earth looks
like. "I mean there are some details to be worked out, sure. But the
basic concept is sound," he said. "Absolutely sound."

Ohhhh, a snow globe! Well, why didn't you say so? That makes total sense. See, here I thought you were saying the earth was like a disc or a plane of some sort, but a snow globe -- now that is totally plausible!

Flat-Earthers denounce traditional and iconic "blue marble" images taken from space as fake, including Rob Skiba.

"As
soon as you start looking into the pictures of the globe, you start
seeing words like 'composite' or 'animation' or you know something that
tells you this is not an actual photograph of the earth," Skiba said

Really? You do?

Well, I just did a Google image search for pictures of Earth from space and I didn't see the word "composite," or "animation" or any words because they're photographs taken from space and there aren't any words on Earth visible from space.

I used to wonder how people could look at the basic fact that the average temperature of the globe increases every year and think that somehow that does not indicate global warming, but this! Holy God! The future does not look bright for the stupid stupid human race.

Tuesday, January 23, 2018

Well, I tried to recreate the missing post from yesterday, but after a lot of pain-in-the-ptoot work, for some reason it won't publish. So, without comment, I present a much more offensive product than the last offensive product.

Yeah, it's a patch that you can sew on to your coat if you think that being a gun owner is somehow similar to being a Jewish person in 1930's Germany. Which some people apparently do think.

So, to their credit, they don't seem to be intentionally trying to be outrageously offensive. they're just to dirt-clod-stupid to realize how obnoxiously distasteful it is to say to a Jewish person "oh, your grandparents were murdered by Nazis? Man, I know how you feel, sometimes people disagree with me about the 2nd Amendment."

Anyway, this gross website sells all kinds of horrifying products. Maybe I'll get a chance to post something about them some day.

Monday, January 22, 2018

Hackers are stealing millions in cryptocurrency during ICOs

A new report from Ernst & Young
details just how big of a problem security is when it comes to
cryptocurrencies. Researchers collected data on 372 initial coin
offerings (ICOs) that took place between 2015 and 2017 and found that
over 10 percent of ICO proceeds are stolenby hackers, a percentage that amounts to the theft of up to $1.5 million per month.

And in addition to monetary theft, hackers are also gaining access to
personal information like addresses, phone numbers, bank details and
credit card numbers.

Ernst & Young's report also points out that along with poor
security, problems like lack of regulation and poor standards for ICO
valuations also plague the crypto world. The researchers said that
instead of important aspects like project development forecasts and the
nature of the token, ICO tokens are often valued based on hype and FOMO
-- fear of missing out.

Thursday, January 18, 2018

The last few days I've been seeing TV ads for this real estate app or website or whatever called "Trulia."

So, this Trulia thing lets you check out neighborhood info before you buy a house. A lot of this makes sense. You can see how good the schools are or what the crime rate is. But what's that second one there? Second from the right?

Oh. "Demographics."

So. . . . hmm. You know, it's one thing to be able to see how good the schools are or whether there's easy freeway access, but if you really want to be sure that you're buying in the "right kind of neighborhood," well only Trulia has the helpful "how many minorities" feature.

Seriously, is there any other reason to have a "demographics" search function?

How is this a product that exists in 2018? And they're not even ashamed of it! They mention it prominently in their ads. They don't even do a sort of "you can see if it's a good neighborhood, wink wink" kind of thing.

Tuesday, January 16, 2018

New California declares "independence" from rest of state

Oy.

Okay, first of all, "New California," no you didn't. You absolutely did not get a majority of the people living in whichever part of the state you think should secede to sign on to this. It's like me saying that my neighborhood is seceding from Atlanta without getting any of the neighbors to sign on.

What do ya got there, about 10 people? Maybe a dozen? Do all the millions of other people who live in your part of California even have an inkling that you've just declared Independence on their behalf?

SACRAMENTO -- With the reading of their own version of a
Declaration of Independence, founders of the state of New California
took the first steps to what they hope will eventually lead to
statehood. CBS Sacramento reports they don't

want to leave the United States, just California.

Well, sure. Wanting to leave the United States would just be silly. You need to set realistic goals.

And which part of California would you like to slice off into the creatively-named "New California?"

The blue part?

I mean.
You do know where the money comes from, right?
You're going to excise Los Angeles, San Francisco and Silicon Valley? I mean, sure you'll have Fresno and the surrounding agricultural area, but No film industry, no Bank of America, no Google, no Marriott Hotels, no Intuit, no Oracle, no Northrup Grumman, no Occidental Petroleum, no Mattel Toys, no Kaiser Permanente, no Clorox, no Facebook. . . well, you get the picture. Good luck replacing all that revenue.

So, anyway, what is the problem you have with California Classic?

"Well, it's been ungovernable for a long time. High taxes, education,
you name it, and we're rated around 48th or 50th from a business climate
and standpoint in California," said founder Robert Paul Preston.

Ungovernable? What does that even mean? I mean, I know what "ungovernable" means. Like the nation of Afghanistan is considered ungovernable because it is more a collection of independent clans than a coherent nation, but in the context of an American state, what the hell do you mean by "ungovernable?" Are the Governor, State Senate, State Assembly and state courts unable to enforce the laws? It's been several years since I've been back to California, but I find it hard to believe that the state has descended into anarchy since then and neither of my sisters would have called to let me know.

Also "high taxes, education, you name it" is an awfully vague listing of grievances. High taxes? Okay, I get why you'd object to that, but education? What about education? I assume you are saying that the California educational system is doing a poor job? Something like that? To be fair, the verrrrry conservative US News & World Report listed California as the 25th ranked state in education. Not great, but not terrible. Not as good as Massachusets, not as bad as South Carolina. Right in the middle. Do you really think that score will improve when you cut the big cities out and your schools are populated mainly by rural meth heads and migrant farm workers?

And sure, California has a fairly high tax rate, compared to a lot of states, but how high do you think your taxes are going to be when you no longer have the Bay Area and Los Angeles/Orange County paying in to the government coffers? When your tax payers are farmhands and river rafting guides, you're going to have to pay a much higher percentage to make up for no longer having computer programmers and aerospace engineers chipping in.

And you say California consistently ranks 48th or 50th in "business climate," but 5 seconds on Google (an "Old California" company) showed me that Forbes ranks them 31st. CNBC ranks them 28th. Sure, there are states that are more attractive to businesses, but do ya really think a bunch of CEOs are gonna decide "hey, let's move the home office to Yosemite!"?

And, you know, it's not like new companies are ever springing up in, say, Silicon Valley, amirite?

The state of New California would incorporate most of the state's
rural counties, leaving the urban coastal counties to the current state
of California. "There's something wrong when you have a rural
county such as this one, and you go down to Orange County which is
mostly urban, and it has the same set of problems, and it happens
because of how the state is being governed and taxed," Preston said.

Wait, what?

If your rural county has the same problems as (sub)urban Orange County, then you've pretty much blown your only real argument for secession. If you could argue that the problems of inland California are so vastly different than the problems of the coastal urban areas that no one government could really address both, you might have a leg on which to stand. But if you're saying that the problems are the same, then what's the advantage of splitting up?

What is it about coastal California that is so troubling to you?

Ohhhhhhh, right! Of course! Well, good luck to you. All ten of you. Good luck explaining to the millions of other people in rural California why you need them to join your new state.